Staring up at the ceiling of his hotel bedroom, Victor Cachat was trying to decide what mood he was in. He didn't trust the sensations produced by the sunny warmth spilling across him from the lightly shaded window. Sunlight was a treacherous thing, apt to confuse a man and make his brains woolly.

But, try as he might, he couldn't help himself. He felt good. Very good indeed. Not elated, just... the kind of self-satisfaction that a man feels when, against all instinct, he has Done The Right Thing.

Of course, he also felt incredibly stupid. And was quite sure that, the moment Ginny showed up, she'd be rubbing salt into that wound.

Sure enough.

The door opened and Ginny bustled in, carrying a tray laden with food. Victor avoided looking at her.

There was perhaps three seconds of blessed silence. Just enough time for Ginny to size up the situation. Victor on the bed, and still fully clothed. Naomi Imbesi sleeping in the same bed, and no longer wearing her outfit of the night before. But, still, wearing a robe. And, still—it was blindingly obvious—not having spent the time engaged in carnal activity.

"Victor, you're hopeless," he heard her growl. "I can't believe I wasted a night's drunkenness just to give you the opening and—you! It's disgraceful!"

"I feel great," countered Victor, still avoiding her eyes. "And you should talk, anyway. In fact, I'm surprised you can talk at all, the hangover you must have, Ms. Comatose-After-Causing-A-Scandal."

Repartee with Ginny was usually a lost cause. "Aren't you the barbarian? D'you think we're still in the dark ages?" She set the tray on a nearby table and beamed approvingly down on Naomi. Who, for her part, was lazily raising her head and smiling back.

"Great stuff, Naomi. Works way better than the junk I brought with me ever does."

"Best hangover-preventative I've ever found," agreed Naomi sleepily. With a soft laugh: "And I tried a lot of them, believe me."

She raised herself up in bed, making no attempt to cover her breasts as her robe fell open. Victor felt uncomfortable for a moment, in the way that a young man caught in flagrante delicto by his older sister will. But the sensation didn't last long. Ginny was neither a prude nor given to hypocrisy, even leaving aside the fact that she'd connived in the whole affair herself.

The whole affair...

Victor found himself wondering if this still-to-happen episode could even be given the name of "affair." He had no doubt at all that Naomi's attempt to seduce him came from ulterior motives. That was part of the reason he'd gotten mulish, at the end.

Only part of it, though—and, being honest, only a trivial part. Like many of the young cadre who'd joined State Security from the Dolist slums, Victor had something of a puritanical streak. But that was more in the way of a reaction to the slovenliness of Dolist life than anything driven by hard ideology, much less religious conviction. Victor had no religious convictions, beyond a hard agnosticism and the certainty that even if something which could be labeled "God" did exist, it cared not in the least about the sexual habits of a minor species inhabiting a tiny portion of one galaxy among untold billions.

No, the real reason he'd gotten stubborn the night before wasn't because of any self-prohibition against casual sex. It was simply due to Victor's natural contrariness. He didn't necessarily object to a woman attempting to seduce him for ulterior motives—not that it had ever happened much in his life. He was just damned if he was going to be easy.

Naomi, clearly enough, hadn't been fooled by his claims of not feeling well. To his relief, she hadn't tried to push the issue. But, she'd insisted on sleeping in the same bed, because for her to leave the suite altogether—at that hour—would undo her carefully crafted work of providing them with an excuse to be seen together. And she'd made something of a production about getting undressed and into a robe.

"And how about you, Victor?" Naomi asked slyly. "Are you feeling better this morning? Or do you need some of my stuff to counter the effects of your—ah, what was it?—one drink? Two?"

Grinning, Ginny picked up the food tray and handed it to Naomi. The Erewhonese woman perched it on her lap and started eating with enthusiasm. She offered some to Victor, but he settled for a couple of the fruits. Erewhon's notion of what constituted a proper breakfast nauseated him a little. He was accustomed to the typical Nouveau Parisian's breakfast, which ran heavily toward grains instead of...

"What is that, anyway?"

"Blood pudding, Erewhon style," said Naomi cheerfully. "They make it by—"

"Never mind! I can probably guess, not that I want to."

Naomi and Ginny exchanged the sort of glances which culinary sophisticates exchange in the presence of stick-in-the-mud louts.

By the time Naomi was finished, Ginny was perched on the foot of the bed, sitting cross-legged. She was wearing a version of a kimono, this morning, which was every bit as immodest as her usual wear. Victor was puzzled by the choice, in fact, since maintaining the cover seemed singularly useless under the circumstances.

He said as much; and, once again, found Naomi and Ginny exchanging the same irritating glance.

"And what are you two being so superior about now ?"

Ginny shook her head. "I worry about you sometimes, Victor. All this travel you've done, these past few years—and it hasn't broadened your horizons one single bit. We're about to start a ménage à trois, dummy. How else are you going to have Naomi keep hanging around, with me in tow?" She made a face. "I am not getting drunk every night just to keep a cover going, especially when you insist on wasting the opportunity."

Victor's eyes widened. Naomi chuckled throatily. "Great minds think alike, obviously. Mine and Ginny's, that is. It'll work just fine, Victor. I'm well-known in Erewhon's haute monde for being bisexual—not that that's anything unusual here, this planet's almost as easygoing that way as Beowulf—and by now anybody will believe anything about Ginny's preferences. So the three of us can keep seeing each other, anywhere and any time, and nobody will wonder about it. In fact—"

She cocked an inquisitive eye at Ginny. Ginny smiled and shook her head. "No thanks. I don't actually sleep around on Kevin, despite the act. It's not even because he'd get jealous. To be honest, I'm not sure he would, he's such an oddball. It's just..." Her face lost all expression.

"Um." Naomi winced. "Yeah, I can imagine. If I'd been brought up in Manpower's slave quarters, I probably wouldn't have any interest in sex at all."

Ginny shrugged. "It's not that bad. Still, if I ever had any notion that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, I lost it long ago."

Naomi rose, holding the tray, and padded over to the table where she set it down. Completely oblivious, so far as Victor could tell, to the fact that her lush figure was half-spilling out of the hotel robe. He found it somewhat unsettling. For all that he knew his relationship with Naomi was fundamentally political, Victor still found it impossible to be that casual about intimacy. Not for the first time in his life, he felt like a country bumpkin.

Having set down the tray, Naomi turned around. She was smiling.

"Not that I'd actually mind—you're pretty cute, Victor—but I hope I'm right in assuming that the two of you are here to establish a private liaison with Erewhon. Or else I'll be wasting a lot of sweat, politically speaking."

Ginny cocked her head. "Yes, we are. But—who exactly is 'Erewhon,' Naomi? Or am I wrong in assuming that you're... ah, working, on behalf of your uncle?"

"No, you're right. But don't assume that because Walter's got no official position that he won't get listened to."

Now that they'd moved onto political ground, Victor felt more at ease. He understood the way Erewhon's government worked better than Ginny did. Between her own sharp wits and the fact that she was Kevin Usher's wife, Ginny's grasp of interstellar politics was acute. But she rarely spent the time in study that Victor did as a matter of routine. In the end, when all was said and done, Ginny was an amateur at this business and he was a professional.

"I understand that," he said. "What I don't understand is why the families in power didn't send someone to, ah—"

"They're not as smart as my uncle, for starters. But even if they were, they'd have hesitated. Everybody on Erewhon is furious with the Star Kingdom—its government, at least—for the way they've been treating us the past few years. Just about anywhere you go, now, you'll hear the same wisecrack: 'With Manticorans as allies, who needs enemies?' But the families running things at the moment are noted for being cautious. So even if they'd figured out what you're really doing here, they'd probably have privately asked my uncle to serve as the go-between anyway. 'Plausible deniability,' and all that."

Victor nodded. Then, decided he had no choice but to stretch the truth a bit. "That's about our position. We're not here officially representing President Pritchart, either." To put it mildly; she'd have kittens if she knew what Kevin was doing. "But it's fair to say she'd listen carefully to anything we said to her." She would, too. Then she'd skin Kevin alive.

Naomi was all business, now, moving over to a nearby armchair and easing into it. She even managed, in some weird manner Victor couldn't begin to fathom, to wear her robe like formal business wear.

"That's good enough for a start. Unlike the ruling families, my uncle has made up his mind. He thinks Erewhon's alliance with the Star Kingdom is a losing proposition and that—given the change of government you've had—we'd do a lot better in alliance with the Republic of Haven. But I'll give you fair warning—he'll drive a hard bargain. If Erewhon comes over to Haven, we're in position to give you a lot more in the way of tech transfer than anything you'll get from the Solarians for years to come."

Victor heard Ginny's sharply indrawn breath. In a way, that was odd, since this possibility was one he and Kevin had discussed in Ginny's presence. But even Victor was feeling a bit light-headed. Naomi had just bluntly put on the table what would, without a doubt, be the greatest intelligence coup Haven had had in years, if it happened. Because of its position as a member of Manticore's alliance, Erewhon had...